[This is something suddenly came to me today and I kinda liked it. I want to see if I can get others thoughts on it. It’s sudden fiction.]
Pages: 2
Word Count: 1199
Swift and Fragile
She was a nimble creature, a rat without any bonds. She ran through the corridors that have long been abandoned by their maker to neglect. The smell of dust overwhelmed the senses; that’s why she cleaned it out. She didn’t believe anyone would mind, the golems are silent and the spells have run dry. There wasn’t anyone to tend to the old books, their enchantments have withered away and blend into the dull dead crumbling pages of the spell book they were crafted into. She looked at the pictures, very amusing but also confusing; filled with circles, lines, triangles into circles, scribbles and markings that made no sense to her. She knew that humans were meticulous, rats are too; that’s why they hang around them so often. Rats find something interesting in how humans would quickly destroy an area and work hard to keep the thing they built in its place in order. They were also curious about the natural world for its wonder as well as its utility, using tools that enhance their ability to manipulate things in their environment beyond what their bodies were ever capable of.
The rats and raccoons learned much from them; that’s why when they were given this gift that enhanced their ability to understand and manipulate things, they were immediately attacked by them. The humans of some towns and cities called them monsters and demons, in other towns they weren’t demons but a curiosity. Some mage or scientist would attempt to capture them to study the way their biology changed and how the energies that gifted them with the ability of shared speech and manipulation affects them. Things started off rough, but the scientist and people began to pay attention the cognitive behavior of their non-human neighbors they began to feel for their plight. Things began to change. She would say that a progressive attitude swept through the humans in this town and changed their attitude towards the creatures who share space with them.
Perhaps the raccoons did it, perhaps they noticed the change first, but they were long gone when first disaster struck the humans; a subtle parasite that ate away at every means they constructed to defend themselves. She stands inside the empty remains of their once great civilization, driven off by their own creations and unable to escape into places their own mistakes couldn’t get them. The darkness of this old tower was the perfect place for their people to grow and thrive. Rats would occupy the places humans had to abandon but they would see to the refugees. Often the rats would seek out items the humans left behind on the promise of food and trinkets. The trinkets were useless to the humans but the rats found a value in their defective craftwork, while the rats refused to poke around any of the human’s gadgets; they are what drove the race from their own home after all. They are also what drove the rats from the tunnels.
In the darkness she is swift, leaping over the gaping holes made by a crumbling foundation, squeezing through the tightest gap in the crumbling building and ascending the debris to the aerie shrouded by a thick mist that made shapes in the light of the campfire. She can find the spirits who’ve lost their way when the calamity fell and stole their breath away; forever to drift through the maze of stone and wood with beds of decaying straw. From this tower she can count all of the survivors with her fingers and toes with enough left over for a straggler or three. The salvage that was once so valuable to the humans is now deemed cursed and they won’t touch it again. The rodents who remain do so because everyone is considered close family to them, so they can only search for signs of survivors until time becomes the thing that slays them.
A flare ascends from the pit it was born, filling the mist with a brilliance that shows all the translucent bones of the deceased. It gives the dead a heartbeat and hope to those who seek the living, for someone has been found. The shadow rats congregate to the flare, crawling over ruin and through the pits they are frighteningly fast and thorough. Under the light of the false sun they gather, rubble shifts and wheezes. The rats dig, lifting stone and pulling dirt, they dig for they will not let family pass unless they exhaust all efforts to save them. Whiskers peek through the soil like young sprouts leading to the roots. They clear the debris from the rodent’s head, giving him fresh air that has been deprived from his weak lungs. They signal for the crew to dig out the torso and find his arms are pinned to it by the mortar of a stone arch that collapsed upon him. Six rats push while others use grappling hooks to pull. The oversized stone crashes onto the ground beside its victim, lifting dust and stirring the phantom mist. They help the unfortunate rodent onto a litter while another sees to covering surface injuries and punctures. All of the rats are ash gray, but for most it’s not their natural fur color; so they keep from further infecting the wounded with filth that has yet to infiltrate his body. She watches three rats carry out the fourth, leaving the remaining fourteen to resume searching for the others. What miracle the doctors will work she can’t say; none know how these rats learned the work of healers for none of them speak of it. That fog seems to stalk the medic and his assistants. No it stalks the wounded survivor like his soul is desperately trying to stay with his broken body.
The rats resume their task, like the grave keepers wandering the cemetery. Unlike the dire humans they sometimes stalked, the rats were not interested in disturbing the dead but liberating the living. She’ll find the memorials they left behind; a wooden toy fashioned into some fabled hero, a favored book, a broken instrument and music score, some of their favored clothes, a lantern whose wax was treated with pheromones to lure in fireflies. She’ll leave them. for the living are of more value than anything they could leave the dead.
In the shadow of a church she smells the rot of flesh and the sight of blood, but she will not find life in the dead pup that lies under the signet of the merciful matron. She can see his soul in the mist, praying to a god he adopted, created by the humans that saw to guarding the creatures who worked beside them. She sees the pup for only a moment before the young one is whisked away by the wisping winds and she’s left before the husk of a child. All youth is stolen away; left by broken hope and the promise of a new life it would bring.
The shadows of a people linger on in the empty shell of the old world; the living, like the dead, linger until the mist that clouds their lives is lifted.